You've probably seen the commercials for pricey toning shoes. The ads promise you'll get in shape just by walking around in them. Toning shoes are a fast-growing segment of the athletic-shoe market. Sales totaled more than a billion dollars last year, about three times the year before.
But as more people buy them, Consumer Reports medical adviser Dr. Orly Avitzur is hearing more frequently about injuries. She says, "One patient was breaking in a pair of toning sneakers and less than 45 minutes after putting them on felt her ankle turn and a bone break."
Doctor Joel Buchalter, an orthopedic surgeon, says that's no big surprise. He says toning shoes are intentionally designed to create instability. "If you take a patient who is elderly or someone who has a balance issue, and you put that shoe on them, you're looking for disaster," Buchalter says.
But even younger people complain of problems, including the physician assistant in Buchalter's office who bought some Skechers Shape-ups. She says that she wore them during surgery for several hours and had back pain for probably three or four days. Skechers instructs people to wear the shoes for short periods of time at first to give the body time to adjust.
As for the health benefits, the company says two studies it sponsored showed improvement in fitness. Butt an independent study by the American Council on Exercise found no significant difference between exercising in toning sneakers and exercising in regular sneakers.
Bottom line: The health benefit touted in the commercials is uncertain, but the risk of injury is very real. Consumer Reports Health says that if you have any balance or medical problems in your legs and feet, avoid toning shoes altogether.
And new injury statistics from the Consumer Product Safety Commission show that even younger people in good physical shape have had problems, some of them serious. Just between March and May, the CPSC received 36 complaints about toning shoes.
More information on toning shoe injuries.
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